I didn’t want to see it. I resisted seeing it. The trailers seemed too cutesy for me. A little too slick. You know who does good homages to the silent era? This Canadian guy named Guy, Guy Maddin. His movies are artful and darkly comic and awe-inspiring. But this… this seemed… cute.

Then I saw that it was made by the son of Claude Berri. He had directed those French movies I loved so much in college, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. Might be a nice “homage” to him to see his son’s film.

Wait, the son produced it, didn’t direct it. Hmmm.

Then The Artist won a bunch of Academy Awards. I still didn’t feel compelled to see it. So what changed my mind? Well, I was in Teaneck, New Jersey, and it was 9:30 p.m. on the day of Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s drunken idiot-fest, and I wasn’t in much of a rush to head back to the Mile Square City. And there is a $5.75 movie theatre in Teaneck. And The Artist was playing at 9:50.

It’s cute. It is stylistically very well-done. Not Maddin quality, but well-done. There are gentle laughs and many smiles. The French guy who won Best Actor, he’s good, he’s very good. Star quality, you might say. I don’t think he’s better than George Clooney in The Descendants, but, he’s quite good. The best French actor in a silent movie since Marcel Marceau in Silent Movie. The female lead is charming. She’s fun to watch.

Who else is in this? Seems like an awful lot of English-speakers for a French movie. And those Weinsteins produced it. Is this an actual French movie or an American movie made by some French people? John Goodman is here, looking slimmer (well, it’s either Goodman looking good or Jonah Hill has gone to hell). James Cromwell has gone from babysitting a talking pig to babysitting a silent Frenchman. And is that Eddie from Frasier? Oh wait, he’s dead. Malcolm McDowell (sans droogies) and Penelope Ann Miller are in this for about 8 minutes combined and I’m not sure why I mentioned them.

The story is, well, you know how talkies replaced silent films, and video killed the radio star, and the Internet finished off newspapers? That’s all that happens here. Writer/director Michel Hazanybodyseenmygirl doesn’t have anything to add to that familiar idea. (Though there are several cleverish winks to the fact that we’re watching a silent movie.) And also there’s the tired A Star Is Born love story, the down-on-his-luck veteran, the peppy newcomer (named Peppy). Michel Havananights doesn’t really know why the French guy should leave his wife so she very conveniently leaves him. There, we don’t have to view our protagonist as a cad! As we say in France, voilà!

And the movie is long. Well, feels long, anyway. A very long 100 minutes. Late in the film I thought, with really no disrespect, “This would’ve made a very cute commercial.” Instead it’s a feature-length movie.

Eh, it’s cute. It’s well-made. Maybe it will make you fall in love with the golden age of silent film. But if you already love movies, you can probably skip this.